We love a refreshing beer in summer, but which are the main ingredients of beer we like it so much? Would you like to know them?
Beer is an ancient drink, which is made with natural ingredients. In the same way, it is considered a very nutritive drink to the point of turning into a nutritional complement for adults and children in Medieval.
So let’s find out the main ingredients of beer, which make this drink so interesting.
Which are the ingredients of beer?
Each brand of beer has its own recipe, but the main ingredients of beer are also the same in all of them: hop, barley and water.
Hop gives its smell and bitter taste to beer
Hop (Humulus Lupulus L) is a wild plant of cannabis family. So it can be male or female. Beer needs the female one, which has a flower with shapes like a pineapple.
The hop flowers have a substance called lupulin, which gives the bitter taste so characteristic of beer. It also forms the foam of beer, as well as it helps to its preserve.
Although hop is a wild plant, it wasn’t an ingredient of ancient beers. However hop was used as a medicinal plant because it has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and sedative properties. For this reasons, the ancient civilizations, such as Romans, used it as a medicinal plant.
Hop is cultivated in Spain mainly in León. But countries such as France or Belgium usually use it in their cuisine.
The first brewers, who used hop to make beer, were the Bavarians in VIII century.
Brewers discriminate between bitter hop, which gives the bitter taste to beer and aromatic hop, which has refined aroma and flavor.
Barley is the most important ingredient of beer
Barley (Hodeum Vulgare) belongs to the grass plants family. But also other cereals, such as wheat, can be used to make beer, barley is the most important. This cereal has proteins and starch, which are necessary for the beer yeast to grow.
The origin of this plant comes from Mediterranean areas, such as Nile delta, where the first beer have developed, as well as their popular beer-bread. But its cultivation has spread to other areas because it can adapt easily to other climates.
There are several types of barleys, but all of them aren’t adequate to elaborate beer. The barley used must be suitable for malting its grain, which has to be thick and rounded and yellowish.
In addition, a good barley grain has to absorb water easily and germinate in a short time. In this way, it will produce the maximum amount of malt.
Malt provides beer its color, aroma and taste. For this reason it is the most important ingredient of beer.
Yeast produces beer fermentation
Yeast is a living organism, which is added to beer because it joins with the sugar of the malt. In this way, the fermentation appears!
At the fermentation time all the ingredients are mixed and the alcohol and the aroma are produced.
After this step, beer has to mature in bottles or barrels and the lovely beer bubbles appear thanks to CO2.
There are 2 types of yeasts:
- Ale yeast has a high fermentation and the yeast accumulate above during the fermentation. And it needs warm temperatures between 15º and 25ºC.
- Lager yeast has a bottom fermentation because it accumulates down and needs low temperatures (4º-15ºC) during the beer fermentation.
Water is the main ingredient of beer
Water is the simplest ingredient of beer, but also important because the 90% of beer is water. For this reason, it is a great drink to quench the thirst.
Water is so important for brewing beer that its taste depending on water of the place, where it is made. Especially some beers such as Pilsen and Ale are associated with its water.
The ancient producers of beer knew it, for this reason the beer factories were near rivers or lakes. Nowadays, they take running water to make beer, but there are still some beer factories, which have its own well.
You can’t use any type of water to make a good beer. It has to be pure and safe water without any taste or smell. On the other hand, mineral salts of water affect too much both the beer flavor and the enzymatic reactions of its manufacture. So, there are many factories, which remove the mineral salts of the water. For example:
- Sulphate gives a dry taste.
- Sodium and Potassium gives a salty taste.
- Calcium precipitates the phosphates of the beer wort, reduces the pH and increases the nitrogen assimilable by the yeast, improving its flocculation.
Beer such as Pilsen needs water with low amount of calcium. However dark beer uses water with more. But the water with a medium amount of calcium is the favorite to make beer.
Life a full beer experience in Beer Spa
Beer Spa offers its customers a full beer experience. You can take advantage of the benefits of beer on your skin, thanks our spa services and our cosmetics made with some of the ingredients of beer. These are our services:
- The beer spa circuit gives you the opportunity to take a bath in a wooden jacuzzi full of beer, while you drink as much beer as you want. Then you can open your skin pores in our sauna with hop essences and finally you can relax on a barley bed.
- We have a lot of special massages, which are made with our beer essences oil beer.
- There are also many beauty treatments with our special cosmetics.
- You can also book a beer tasting after our services in Beer Spa Alicante, so you can taste different types of beers
We have 4 wellness centers in Spain: Granada, Alicante, Zahara de los Atunes and very soon also Tenerife! Come to know us!
In conclusion, the ingredients of beer aren’t sophisticating, but how delicious is! In addition, this natural ingredients deliver great advantages to our body. So don’t hesitate and this summer say: A cold beer, please! Cheers!
Inma Aragón
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